Yinka Shonibare CBE RA in "Transformation" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

[ YINKA SHONIBARE ] Odile and Odette
is based on Swan Lake.

The white swan is trying
to get married to the prince.

And the black swan
is the magician's daughter,

who is trying to take
the place of the white swan.

What i've done with
"Odile and Odette"

is to blur the boundaries
between the baddie and the good one.

I've made them into one person.

They are one, but they're different.

And that's kind of what that film is about.

I've always enjoyed using beauty and seduction
as a way of engaging people with the work.

My figures actually are of mixed race.
They're neither White nor Black,

and they don't have
any kind of facial features

that would make you
identify them racially.

It's also a device that manages
to make the pieces post-racial.

It's also a joke about
the French Revolution,

when the aristocracy
had their heads guillotined.

I'm very fascinated by class
in my work.

And I like the idea
of parodying or mimicking

the notion of class.

My lineage within the Nigerian context
is quite aristocratic.

My great-great-grandfather
was a Nigerian chief.

My father is a lawyer.

So I grew up, really, in a fairly affluent situation.

Because I didn't grow up

feeling inferior to anyone,
you know, so I couldn't quite

understand the hierarchy of race
in this country,

because it was somewhat
sort of alien to me.

Although the fabrics
are associated with Africa,

they have their origins
in Indonesia.

The Dutch started to produce the fabrics

industrially
for the Indonesian markets,

I guess, towards the end
of the 19th century.

The industrially produced
versions are not so popular in Indonesia.

So they tried West Africa.

I like the fact that the fabrics
are multilayered.

They have this interesting
history that goes back to Indonesia.

And then they're appropriated

by Africa and now represent
African identities.

Things are not always 
what they seem.

And, you know, so—

and I sort of enjoy working—
working with that.

Did you just see the front of "The Economist"?

"World on the edge".

I'm interested in the architects
of the present economic disaster.

So um...

And so I wanna dedicate a
drawing to Ben Bernanke

and Paulson

and Milton Friedman.

The drawings actually
also started as a result

of issues around climate change.

Climate really is more for me about the zeitgeist,
you know, trying to capture

the climate of the moment.

There are times when I do really kind of objective things.
I take things out of magazines

or newspapers.

But then I do intuitive things
alongside that.

Well, this is my return to
drawing in 12 years.

'Cause a lot of my work to date
is in mainly painting, sculpture,

photography,
and film.

I kind of wanted to go back
to basics, just do some more

intimate things.

I've decided to use flowers
as the starting point.

And then against the financial
side,

literally just use pages from
the "Financial Times".

Those are cut out
into flower shapes.

And then those are combined
with the fabrics,

the batik that I use in my work.

Those are also cut into flowers.

So it's a juxtaposition, if you like,

of nature and culture

and just trying to see if the drawings can become
more than the contents.

It would be nice to have more
"Financial Times" flowers,

but like different sizes,

maybe like you did in there.

- Okay.
- You know?

[ both chuckle ]

- People often ask me,

you know how much work
does Yinka actually do?

He's quite a conceptual artist
And for, you know, centuries,

people haven't always
made their own work, physically.

There always have been teams of
people that work on them.

Working with Yinka,
it's quite a creative process.

To be able to adapt the
ideas that he has

and insert your own ideas.
And he allows for that.

The show in Sydney was the first
retrospective of its kind.

It was a survey of 12 years
of Yinka's work.

So it was really interesting
to see all these works

side by side that had never been
pulled together

for many, many years.

and really interesting to take a look at the works
from today's context

and where the work today
is going.

[ indistinct background chatter ]

- "Black Gold" is about oil.

Literally like a sort of oil
splash on the wall.

I was thinking about
oil being black gold,

because it's becoming
a rare commodity.

I was also thinking particularly
about the oil in Nigeria.

Western companies have just
totally destroyed

the flora and fauna
of the area,

and the rivers
are full of oil, gunk,

and it's just too sad,
you know?

It's just horrible.

"Scramble for Africa" is based on a
conference that was held in Berlin

in 1884 to 1885.

The European countries came together to divide up
africa to decide who would have

which trading area.

And so I re-imagined it with these brainless men
sitting around the table,

literally brainless.

And they're having this meeting
and deciding the fate of Africa.

When i was 19,
I got a virus in my spine,

which left me
completely paralyzed.

I've been gradually
recovering from that.

- Yeah, we good with that?

- Do you want to get rid of it?

"Dorian Gray" is probably the point at which I first

talked about the ideas
of disability in my work.

I put myself in the series
as Dorian Gray.

I was thinking more about
my own mortality.

And my own internal conflicts

with various kind of moral issues, personal issues.

And the difficulty of living
with my own body.

Difficulty in relation to my own kind
of vanity as well.

When i wanted to work
with photography,

it was obvious that i would use myself
because,

you know, unfortunately, I am concerned
with myself or, you know—

I'm kind of self-obsessed,
like most artists.

And you know, so naturally,
I started working with myself

and using my own body
to sort of express

what i'm trying to express.

I did "Diary of a Victorian Dandy".

That piece is loosely based on
Hogarth's "A Rake's Progress"

It's really about complicity
with excess.

Power creates excess.

And what's my relation to excess,
and how do I play with that?

Of course, I could choose
to point a finger at it,

but, you know, I also actually
would like to have the trappings

of wealth myself,

even though I may be
criticizing it.

- Do you know what I mean?

So you have to get that feeling,
give the feeling

that there is light
coming from outside.

- Right.

- Seeing the early pieces, I can see the journey
that I've made to arrive

at the later pieces.

And it starts to become clearer how I
actually moved from painting to costumes.

And then to photography.

And then to moving image.

You know it seems kind of logical how that would happen.

"Un Ballo in Maschera" was one of the
most exhausting things

I've ever done
in my life.

I had to learn fast.
It was my first film.

I had to go from auditioning the dancers to designing the costumes,

to doing the storyboards for the film.

Then working with a cinematographer.

I mean, I didn't even know what Steadicam was.

I found out.

And I worked with a choreographer

called Lisa Toren who is Swedish.

The Swedish King Gustav III was fighting wars in Russia

and Denmark and his people were starving.

He loved the lavish lifestyle

And he had this fondness 
for masked balls.

There was a plot to kill
him at the ball.

[ gunshot fires ]

I always imagined I was a very
strong political republican.

Republican is anti-monarchy in Europe

so it means that you don't

like the hereditary system
of kings and queens.

Member of the Order of the British Empire
is an award of merit

given for services
to any discipline, really,

you know, from science to

engineering, to charities, to the arts,

and I was given this award
for services to the arts.

What I find ironic about it is that actually my work
all along has been a critique of empire.

So my artist's name now is
Yinka Shonibare MBE,

so Member of the Order
of the British Empire.

[ chuckles ]

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